Created By: GASM Media
Review Author: Adam Monks
Rating: 3.5/5 cans of craft beer
Dice Lords is the newest production out of Gasm Media, a great bunch of lads on YouTube who are producing high-quality mini-series aimed at the gamers among us. Their last series, Rivals, blew us away and brought us into the world of YouTube series in a big way. So when the Twitter thing starting making that noise that usually means we’ve been invited to review something we sobered up enough to answer them and dove at the chance to watch their newest piece of work.
Admittedly, I’m not a huge fan of the fantasy lore, I can barely sit through The Lord of the Rings. but I did enjoy this. A lot.
If you were to read up on the premise: ‘The Earth is under attack, and the only hope we have is a group of roleplayers who are mistaken for the brave and powerful warriors they play in their game. Granted incredible powers, the DICE LORDS are all sent on a quest to save the earth…after they completely abuse their powers.’ You may think it’s a fantasy based quest piece. But it’s really not, it’s a lighthearted situational comedy, deriving humour from the context of the role playing world. It doesn’t alienate you with any heavy references or make you feel like an outsider if you don’t play. It’s comedy. They create real, relatable and slightly stereotypical characters who go on a great character arc together.
There’s some fantastic humour as they all come to grips with their powers in their own way (while also abusing them to comedic effect). The show itself has an exceptionally professional comedic timing and production value that would rival that of large entertainment studios. The amazing thing about the barriers to content that YouTube brought down is it gives shows like this a chance to be seen! Without having to crawl under the desk of a network executive and let them ruin your creative vision.
The production value, editing, and effects are outstanding, really it warrants its own paragraph- we have truly left the days of shitty iPhone short films on YouTube- this is professional grade, well written, well-shot HD studio grade work here. There’s so so so many things you’re supposed to pay attention to during the review process but my damaged drunken brain just kept coming back to ‘holy shit, that was an excellent cut’.
This show is very irreverent, light-hearted, set to a theme that builds very real fandom and anyone who says it’s an attack on the gaming culture can eat a barrel of dicks because it’s not at all. It’s an homage to the people who play it and a fun story about some misanthropes who end up in a crazy situation. It’s like a toned down Rick and Morty- irreverent, witty, well made and relatable.
It’s short form content that’s ideal for a quite night in, we’re looking forward to the next thing they make!
We want to support the people who use their creativity to bring some new stories to the world. If you’re a filmmaker, of any size. If you’ve made something that you want to put in front of people, that you’re proud of…Send it to ReelTimeDublin@Gmail.com. We will get a little bit drunk and review the shit out of everything we’re sent. We’ll then seed and tweet it out on our Twitter.
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